


His Salvation

by pumpkinpeyes



Category: Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Halloween, Reader-Insert, anywhoozles: no major character death, but a lot of minor character death, crazy recognize crazy, explicit warning for gore and dark themes, i do what i want because i need control over something in my life, most intimate thing will be a kiss, multi-chapter, reader is fucking crazy, slasher fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2020-04-23
Packaged: 2021-01-22 18:41:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21306743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pumpkinpeyes/pseuds/pumpkinpeyes
Summary: Michael Myers has been in the sanatorium since killing his sister. It had been unanimously decided that he be held well past his own eighteenth birthday. He's made a name for himself for being violent and being silent. A new doctor comes in out of the blue and your caseload seems to be Michael alone. Is someone of sound mind simply because of their degree? Will Michael find a way to escape and continue what he wishes he'd never been caught for? Why do you feel less like a potential victim and more like another predator?
Relationships: Michael Myers/Reader
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I know full and well that happenings in the following story are likely to be inaccurate and fudged. Timelines have been warped a little and I've taken some artistic licences. I think that Michael Myers has the opportunity to be intelligent and still be just as dangerous. Comments and criticism appreciated.

He sees their horror. Their fear is a thick and tangible thing. People fear what they do not know; what they may never have the chance to understand and nothing can change those misconceptions. A man walks into his little world, in this old sanitarium with the musty hallways and sheets starched to a stiffness that could shatter, and asks to see the craziest of the crazies. This overweight, pinched-mouth of a man is led to this cell - this one cell that nurses never visit alone. Where sedation isn’t as-needed but required for visits like these. The ride is no fun if the Monster acts out. No chances taken.

“I’m writing a book,” the man explains to the others in the room, talking about him as if he isn’t here, “and I needed a bit of inspiration. I can talk about lifeless eyes, soulless stares, the tension in the line of an arm raised to attack, but this -this- will make my manuscript give my readers goose-bumps; it’ll make them afraid to turn off their lights and leave anything unlocked.”

He is careful. He is smarter than they believe - more aware and cognizant than a lifeless murderer - and there are cards he’s playing; a risky hand to be played. He’s got everyone in place but the Dealer and the highest bidder with a poker face to rival his own. The Head Psychologist plays close to the chest with his own mask: glasses on, refracting light and a kind smile to cover the sharp-toothed grin when he takes patients that no one will miss into the basement only to never come out. The Good Doctor is Death. What Doctor has done with his hands are worse fates than anything he’s done and likely anything he may do again.

In his fantasies, he’s always treated his kills like animals. Hunting, stalking, and killing. But the Doctor? No. Unlike him, the Doctor plays with his kill. Suffering for suffering's sake. Stretching out to inevitable torture that blanks the mind. Doc is the one who’s sick. Doc is the one who should be in a cell just like his. But there isn’t a natural justice in the world. Justice and Peace are nothing on this hunk of rock hurtling through space. Arbitrary rules dictated by people with enough power and, more importantly, the most money. Morality shifting both ways; whichever way saves the most money and keeps the rich in the business of governing the poor. 

Who, then, has the right to keep him locked up in this bitch of a cell? Why does he have to be holled up? Because murder is a crime? Who has any right to keep him caged like a circus animal to be ogled and fed slop while he wastes away? 

See, he believes that those he kills - in his head and out in the world - are his to do with what he wills. He isn’t a ghost nor myth. He is a threat, a live one, and people should be afraid. It’s a part of the human hind-brain to signal when a threat is near. That’s what goosebumps and the hair standing up on the back of your neck is for. It’s that gut feeling. Fight or flight. Frankly, getting killed is just as much their own fault as his. Prey are so because they all are at risk to be caught, fought, and taken. 

All this to say that there is a reason why Michael Myers killed and will kill again is, simply, because he can and is one of the few pleasures he has found in this life. Right or wrong be damned.

He isn’t incapable of talking, like emotion displayed on the face, these things can be controlled. This lesson was learned after that first year in this dark, gaping hole: talking is the act of opening your mouth while digging your own grave. As a child, he’d let psychiatrists and psychologists poke and prod answers out of him. Garnering quite the reputation for depravity and psychopathy. Since then, Michael likes control. In an environment where his very own will is settled into a nine-by-five room with precise mealtimes and medicinal cocktails given three times a day - not including sedatives - it is no wonder that he exercises severe and total control over the only thing he has in this desolate place: his mind.

“So he hasn’t said a word?” The author asks. “Not even a curse? No leer towards a nurse?”

That leaves him heated. He’s a killer, yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a gentleman or rather that he couldn’t pretend to be one. If he was ever inclined. Truth be told there is a part of Michael that knows that the control he is so vehement to keep, that mask - the one he wears and the one he has - is only tested by...affections. Sex and the power it brings is the greatest challenger 

to his stoicism. He counts it as luck that his killer presence and lumbering physicality keeps all and any potential partners away. Being locked away helps that, too, something he’s sure to rectify when he leaves this sordid place. He’ll find his escape, one way or another.

“Look at him, he’s blank.” The author is still speaking, breath putrid and acrid, the stale stench of cigarette smoke wafting from his cheap cardigan. “Nothing much going on in there, huh?”

The Doctor hums thoughtfully, “Oh, there is if you care to look.” The author laughs but the Doctor is quick to cut through it with an ice pick edge, “It’s carelessness like that which would end you, dead as a doornail, at the end of whatever knife he cares to carve you with.”

Michael keeps staring at the wall. Careful not to move any more than to breathe. He does it out of sheer force of will with a heavy dose of spite. The author is gaining his ‘insights’, his shivers-down-the-spine, the air of a killer (stale air and sweat), and looking into Michael’s eyes so he can claim that it was surely a devil that held his thousand-yard stare. As if his actions could be called morbid and despicable in a world where it’s perfectly legal to murder one another so long as War is involved. People liked to think that way; that war was other-worldly and so far removed that the news headlines were easy to gloss over only because it wasn’t happening in your own backyard. 

“The Devil’s in this boy, that’s for certain.” The author blabbers on, trying to nervously edge around the scold, “Something is missing, though.”

Doctor Death hums again, “Tell me, what exactly were you hoping for?”

As good a question if there was any, and Michael wants to hear this just as much as the Doctor does. What do people think when they hear his name? Oh, the kind of terrifying things people must be coming up with. A maniacal laugh, perhaps? Blood still crusted on his clothes with drool and spittle making him froth at the mouth like some dog? The fear, that chilling moment where your mind flips the switch to fight against Death or run from it, yes, that fear is what makes him terrifying. You don’t need theatrics to be lethal. You’re simply are. That’s enough. More than.

The author takes pause, hopefully to take stock of his assumptions, and huffs, “I was hoping for a line. Something...some sort of quote. A phrase. Anything, really.” He sucks his teeth and takes a few steps away, rubbing a hand over his face, “The murder was so brutal and just plain wicked, well, I guess I thought the man responsible would be just the same.”

The Doctor smiles and moves to usher the author out of his cell; it’ll be dinner soon, “It doesn’t take a disorganized mind to ravage their victim. I find that it’s the silent ones that are the most depraved.”

“Well,” the author nods while they all - except Michael - leave the cell, “there’s a quote if I’ve ever heard one. Mind if I use that, Doc?”

The Doctor hums noncommittally and waives the man on, almost impatiently, and turns to Michael, a quirk of a smile and a gleam in his eye, “Myers, I have a surprise for you but I think you should sleep off the rest of that sedative before I hand you over. You need to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for your appointment.”

The door closes with a heavy seal and the sound of a lock clunking into place. He can still smell that author’s rancid aftershave that is trying to pass itself off as Aqua Velva; reminds him of a stray dog he’d once met that had rolled in at least three foul things before laying in the rain for half a day. Oh, so that was probably an exaggeration; wet dog smells enough on its own. 

Michael moves, knees cracking when he stands and the urge to groan while stretching is almost too much to bear, and turns down his bed. Best he could tell from the Doctor’s watch it was a little after one in the afternoon. Lunch eaten in silence with no account for the palate; looking at it was more than enough for one to know what the color grey tastes like. So he puts himself to bed and closes his eyes, playing over the Doctor’s words in his mind a few times on the proverbial spit to glean off the fat drippings of a smug promise. 

An appointment? He’s fairly sure that his sentence in this medicated prison is far from over, the decision to release him at eighteen like the state law mandates was unanimously looked-over, and they have decided three years ago that his time was best spent sitting on the edge of his bed; the occasional walk to a chair by a thick window to watch storms roll in and turn everything dark and flooded with shadow. He prefers this weather, revels in the lightning and thunder that follows. It’s the atmosphere that he dreams of when his more - let’s call it dangerous - activities come forth to play out the fantasies of murder and warm blood set to cool and congeal. 

And so he falls asleep, swaddled in a thin blanket over his bulky form and towering height leaving his feet off the end of his bed, expectations forming with the barest hint of apprehension.. That is because there is one place in this cesspool of lobotomies and white paper cups carrying horse-pills that he has yet to see: the basement. He knows that between sedatives and a few of some strong-armed nurses anything can happen. He doesn’t have even a modicum of control past his own mind. And even that can be turned against him with the right cocktail. 

He falls asleep fitfully and with something nagging him that is the closest thing fear as he’s ever been. Apprehension, he supposes, simple and easy to shrug off.

-

He wakes at the rapping of knuckles against his metal door and the sound of a tin tray sliding across the floor into his room. The nurse calls to him, tells him that he has a half-hour to eat and then ten extra to change into his pants and sweater - standard psych ward garb - and leaves without waiting for a confirmation; they never get one. He sits up and swings his legs over the side. That sedative should have worked its way out of his system but he still feels a little slow. That could be the sleep in his eyes and the stiffness in his joints but either way he moves to grab his tray and eats it in silent contemplation. 

There was one thing he hadn’t considered and was loathe to admit that he’d overlooked. It was possible that the Doctor had arranged for yet another psychologist to try to pry even one word out of his mouth with their false sympathy and forced smiles that pulled the corners of their mouth like they’d been stitched there to compensate for their fear-filled, hyper-vigilant eyes. He’d yet to see a single doctor that could get him to talk and didn’t look like they had to spend an hour with a nightmare. He may find it in himself to be violent again if he had to listen to another speech about Freud and how killing his sister and his violent urges are simple lack of motherly love and care. That using a knife was akin to impotence and was meant to mirror sexual proclivity. 

His mother could have been the sweetest the world had seen - a veritable angel - and he’d still be this way. See, the way he saw it, his bloodied hands were washed in the school of Nature, not Nurture. His mother could act any way she saw fit and he’d still have killed his sister. Maybe sooner, maybe later, and maybe in such a way that he wouldn’t be caught. He can’t blame himself too much for that, though, he was six. If anything, he’s impressed with himself.

Sweater on first and then sweats over his underwear - a bit worn but comfortable - and waits for a group of orderlies and a nurse come to take him to his appointment. He shrugs to himself while no one is around to see it. He will get out of this rat-trap for the criminally insane one day and when he does he knows that he won't be caught again. They’ve given him too many years to think things over. Pandora’s box will open and when it does he will die before they manage to close him in it again. 

There is a thought, a quote, that Freud had penned to paper, “in the unconscious every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.” Short of sounding narcissistic, he definitely plans on securing a type of immortality that comes with myths and legends. People love a good horror story. 

A knock against his door derails his thought and he sits on the edge of his bed, waiting for the door to open and the band of fools to lead him with a clinking chain to the newest Psych with a desk bigger than their caseload requires. 

Instead, to his surprise that he is careful to mask, a single orderly comes in with a hard-backed chair and leaves it facing Michael with a sidelong look at his profile, and then you walk in. There is a healthy dose of confusion and unease when the orderly leaves and proceeds to shut the door behind him. This has never been standard practice and it has thrown him off his game, even if for a little while, and he wonders if you are just as dangerous as he is. 

You introduce yourself, thick folder and notepad under your arm, pen tucked behind your ear as you smooth down your skirt before sitting. You primly cross your legs, skirt just an inch or two too short - something he feels is intentional - to show off the tops of your hosiery and a glimpse of the smooth flesh of your thighs. Your blouse is conservative and tucked in as well, your collar at the base of your throat, hair up in a bun to show off the lines of your neck that your earrings so easily draw attention to. Your nails are freshly clipped and painted the same shade of red that is splashed across your lips. You look like a devil with the kind of bait to reel in any man with a llick of common sense. 

He eyes you unabashadley and steels himself when he sees you do the same, calculating something about him, adding together some arbitrary number before nodding to yourself. As if he’s past muster. You speak and it sounds demure on the surface but taut underneath - the strength of a steel cable - and smile easily, disarmingly. 

“I thought you might prefer your own...quarters to my office.” You gesture in what he assumes is the direction of said office. “No need to shuffle you about when I can walk without a set of bells on me.”

He’s careful to fight the instinct to squint his eyes at you but can’t help the small flex of his fingers against the bed. White-knuckled and creaking just the barest amount. You see this, like you’re waiting for it, and give him an indulgent smile. He imagines throttling you. His large hands wrapped around your neck like a vice while he lifts you off your high-heeled feet and shakes that coiffed hair loose. He wants to see what shape your mouth takes when you’re gasping for breath. 

“I’ve read your file,” you continue, unaware of the fantasy he’s crafting, “and it was certainly informative.”

Michael scoffs inwardly, to himself, and easily beats the desire to roll his eyes. This is obviously a ploy set by the Doctor. Send in a pretty woman, risque enough to tease, and try to seek out even the barest of emotions as possible. Is this bait supposed to crack him?

You speak again and he pays attention if only to remember the way your voice sounds so that he might have an idea of how a scream would play to his ears, “But it’s all a load of shit, isn’t it?” You ask and in such a way that it sounds like you’ve already accepted that he won’t speak. “From what I’ve gathered, from your mother, there was no love lost between the two of you. If anything, she’s the only positive figure of a woman you’ve had in your life. I dare say that she still prefers you over your murdered sister. A mother’s love, I suppose, can gloss over quite a lot.”

This sends his hackles up for some reason and he tries his best to communicate through his eyes alone that he’s not happy with what you have to say.

As if you’re answering his silent anger, you put your hands up briefly as if to apologize for your implications, “Don’t think I’m trying to disparage her. I know she was as lovely as a peach. I can only imagine the...toll it must have had on you when she commited suicide. Especially with the rest of the community hailing it as your second murder. Poor taste, if you ask me.”

That’s new to him. He’d heard that she had died. The Doctor had made it very clear that it held a sort of glee to tell Michael the most sobering of news he’d heard in years. The feeling that was probably the closest to love lost. If what he felt - even for his own mother - could be called love. But he’d never heard or thought of what the world labeled it as. He knew his mother was sick in the head. He was - at least according to majority standards - and that’s a bit of Nature, isn’t it? Genes passed down. Mental illness reincarnated. The Nurture of one ill mind to another is bound to create the perfect mix for a Psychopathic biology.

But to assume that his mother killed herself because she couldn’t handle what he had become, even at such a young age, was laughable. His mother was crazy, sure, but, she’d never held anything less that love in her heart for her son. To think otherwise was sensationalist journalism. A story hot off the press that couldn’t be refuted by anyone and thus taken as gospel. What a poor woman. How sad it was that she had the son of the Devil. How haunted she must have been.

Bullshit. 

“Everyone likes to forget that she didn’t blame you when it came to the murder of your sister.” You tap your pen on the notepad in a soft staccato, “I can offer up my sympathies - if they matter. I’d only spoken to your mother once before her death.”

Now, that throws him. He blinks a few times, as if to clear his mind, almost like a flutter of a butterfly's wings. You had spoken to his mother? That apprehension was creeping back up on him again. A day full of faints and the occasional right-hook of surprise. You aren’t like the other Psychs that he’d been forced to see. Your approach had been unprecedented. The intimacy of his small cell, calculated. Slight plays to his sexual desires with the lines of your legs and the length of your neck. A nod to his mother and the lack of sympathy so far for his sister. You’re trying to play him right into your own little hand, so slight compared to his own. 

This is too well thought out and planned to be the Doctor’s doing. It seems as if you have brought yourself into his circle by sheer force of will with a play to the Doctor’s ego. What is this? You solve the puzzle of Michael Myers and the Doctor sells it as his own or is this something else? You seem all too content to play this slow, one underhanded comment at a time. 

As if you knew his thoughts you deliver another dig, “She was quite handsome, if a little strained, and yet still managed to remain level-headed. Her suicide was an actual suprise to me. She seemed fine, healthy even, when I spoke with her. She showed me your baby photos and spoke about you like you’d hung the very stars.”

That disgruntled him more than anything. Those were moments that he held dear, even though he could barely remember them, they were his. The idea of this woman pouring over his early years with his mother sets something off in his head. An alarm of some kind. The kind of feeling that an animal would have when it senses a predator is near. Looking at you again, this psychologist, he sees that everything about you is practiced and holds a purpose. You haven’t tried to get him to speak. You have just said things that, to anyone else, would seem innocuous. But to him, feels rather strongly as moves along a chessboard. Pawns set to break defenses. 

“Overdosing on pills is quite a way to go.” You say, the mask of sympathy almost seamless. 

Another fact, clenching his jaw tight against his molars to where he can almost hear them creaking. His mother’s death - the culprit, the action that took her life, had not been published. For what little family there was left to mourn her. Poor taste, indeed. He was sure now, more than anything, that you had a hand - or even just a finger - in his mother’s untimely death. You both stare at one another. He’s furious and confused. He feels that his control is slipping just the barest of amounts and he hates you for it in this moment. And, yet, he felt that you were the most interesting and lovely thing he’d seen in years. Potato, potato. Maniacal, unstable. 

“I tried that once.” You carry on, earning a twitch of an eyebrow from him. “Taking a handful or two of some pills like a cocktail for a party of one. First, you feel unsettled. The joints start to feel stiff and this overwhelming need to move them, to stretch, is almost too much. Your muscles twitch, your hands shake and jerk, and you can toss and turn as much as you like but nothing makes those feelings go away. There’s no amount of movement that makes it go away.”

He’s actually unsettled for a moment. Microexpressions impossible to govern, the draw of his brow only a fraction of a second, but seen. The slight tightening in his spine while he subconsciously straightens his back. He’d only been allowed to see his mother a handful of times across the years, on his birthday up until she died. He had never spoken to her, quite possibly the only thing he can regret, but she had filled the silence for him. Each time was the same. She didn’t blame him. She still loved him. Nothing he could do would ever make her stop loving him. 

He watches you, almost warily, while you carry on with a chilling calm, “Then there is the nausea. This deep-rooted thing that bubbles and twists your stomach on end. Your body tries it’s best to expel the poison. Vomiting, purging this acidic bile that burns you from stomach to mouth. The worst case of heartburn you’ve ever had. And it’s just over and over and over again. Until you’re bent over yourself, because you don’t have the energy to move to the bathroom, and hacking up this radioactive-feeling sludge. It covers your bed and your lap, caked to your chin and smelling acrid and sharp. Heaving breaths between each purge.”

If he were anyone else this would be cruel. Your painfully descriptive words painting the picture of what his own mother was likely to have gone through. Your face is just as impassive as his own, apart from a strange glimpse of wistfulness, and he can’t help but wonder if you belong in a place like this, too. How many people had you fooled in becoming a psychologist? And what brought you to him now? If he could feel afraid he would imagine that you would be able to flip that switch. But he isn’t fearful, there are no goosebumps, no hair-tingling, and while he definitely has a number of questions about you - if anything - he’s the most interested in you as he’s ever been. Like knows like and he has a feeling that you may be more than just an attractive woman.

You smile at him, small and wicked, and he feels something coming to life inside him. Your descriptions are so detailed and personal and so very visceral. He can see it in his mind’s eye like a movie laid out before him. The dictated account alone is enough to rile him up. The first time in years that he’s ever thought about holding someone down for reasons other than to kill.

“Then,” You breathe out, voice low and almost too quiet to hear, like you’re inviting him to lean in, “A panicked stretch into darkness. Vision closing down into a tunnel with a pinprick of light at its end. Breathing labored and your own body growing heavier and heavier until you can’t move at all. The room spinning and this sinking feeling that death is near, that you look a right mess covered in your own sick and slick with sweat.” You take a deep breath like you’re coming up for air after being underwater for a touch too long, “Just as you fade you feel thankful in that moment, to yourself, for completing a plan you’d made and suffered over for so long. Only to wake in a hospital, being told that you’re lucky that they made it to you in time.”

You take a breath and then shudder out an exhale and he can’t help but watch the way your chest heaves and shakes. Does the staff know what kind of person they’ve employed? He’s certainly not complaining, this is the most excited he’s been. But surely you should have set off some sort of alarm with any of the staff here. He admits that even the Doctor would have to be much more stupid that he’d given credit for if he hadn’t caught wind of your behavior. You were crazy as a corkscrew. Maybe more of a wild card than he was based only on the fact that you didn’t seem to know the rights and wrongs; it was more likely that you believe you are completely guiltless. Even he was inclined to feel something for his poor mother. 

He is going over these thoughts, brow furrowed ever so slightly, and looks you over again. There is no way you’re an actual psychologist. Perhaps you had handed your application in person. Shown a little skin, batted your eyes and pursed your red lips. Padded a resume with bullshit and somehow made it pass through smelling of roses. Your makeup is flawless but he can see that you wouldn’t look a day over twenty without it. He laughs in his mind, a sharp sound, almost disbelieving. He figures that what you’re really here for was him.

A stretch of silence builds between him and you. Palpable. Marked in the fact that he’s shown more emotion - no matter how small it has been - with you than he has in years makes him that much more infuriated and hot under the proverbial collar. Evil can see evil. He tastes it on his tongue. Your smell practically burns his nostrils. You glance to your watch and just as you do, the door swings open and the same orderly comes in. He watches you stand, smoothing out your shirt and tuck the stack of papers under your arm again, He watches, almost hungrily, as you tuck the pen behind your ear again.

“Our time is up for today.” You say, and it almost sounds forlorn. “We will pick this up again tomorrow morning. I’d like to see how you are in the early hours. Thank you for your time.”

You give him a discreet wink before leaving his room. The orderly is markedly more careful, keeping a careful eye on MIchael while he grabs the chair and leaves. As soon as the door closes and the lock latches he forces himself to relax - one finger at a time, then his hand, then the tense line of his shoulders - and he scolds himself for showing you even the barest of emotion. He’ll do better in the morning. It’s his turn to throw you off your game. This time, he’ll lay in bed, hands behind his head, letting his attention focus to the ceiling alone. If he’s to provoke a genuine emotion out of you he must do his best to give you nothing to write down and analyze. 

For the first time in several years he allows himself to smile. A slow, self-satisfied pull of the lips. If he’s lucky, you could be his ticket out of this Hell.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

“Wake up.”

He startles awake, eyes flashing open and inhales one sharp breath, sitting up in his bed and swinging his legs over the side to sit facing the wall. Never has he been so incredibly driven to break and look at you. Your command had been hard and harsh. A complete and total lack of feeling. He was inclined to believe that you were a wholly different person if it weren’t for the malicious lilt of your voice. It was a tactic. You had him at every disadvantage possible without breaking some law. Shocked awake, groggy and disoriented, bladder full and stomach empty. He’s at a loss to your gain and if that isn’t just the sweetest thing for you? You’d sop it up happily with a nice, warm dinner roll and eat it all in one go if you could.

“Not a morning person, are we?” You tut, waving in a different orderly with your chair. You aren’t wearing the same provocative ensemble that you had on just yesterday. He could smell the change on you. No perfume, only the light scent of washed and starched clothes and what he assumes must be some cheap hotel room complimentary shampoo and soap. Lingering notes of cigarette smoke and something rough and earthy like iron and the taste that pennies leave in your mouth. 

He barely manages to keep a sneer from his face. It’s a close thing. And aren’t you just as smug as ever? Watching you from the corner of his eye he sees you swing the chair in closer to his bedside. You’re wearing black, high-waisted slacks kept up with dark and sharp suspenders over a no-nonsense white button-up done all the way up to your neck. There are only two noteworthy things about you today: a long and delicate, thin gold chain with some kind of pink pendant on the end that looks familiar to him in a way he can’t place. You wear no makeup except a severe and bold line of eyeliner sharp as a tack. No hair out of place. Slicked back to shine and coiffed into a bun atop your head. 

You hook your right ankle over your left leg and fold your hands in your lap. There are no papers today. No pen in sight and no clipboard to hold. He can feel your eyes burning holes into the side of his face but he is not going to dignify you with eye contact. There was already so much for him to take painful control over. His bladder was insistent. The need to urinate was almost enough for him to break and excuse himself to the toilet that took up residence in the corner of his room. No privacy. No chances taken. 

“I suppose I should have allowed you your morning’s duties, hm?” You smile and he doesn’t see it but he can sure as fuck hear it in your voice. “Please,” you gesture magnanimously, “help yourself.”

Silence. You’ve spoken to command rather than to allow. He hates you for it. There isn’t a lot of space in his head at this hour and it’s uncomfortable to guess at the angle you’re playing. His patience is thin and he can’t help but think that your neck is just as wiry and likely to be easy to snap. He can feel his hands shake with the tension of gripping his sheets just a touch too hard and tries to figure out which move he could make that would help him gain more ground before it started to look like he was being led along with a leash and not by his own will.

So he stands. He knows that he’s tall and intimidating with a spare tire for chest width and easily fifty or more pounds heavier than you. He steps past you, deliberately knocking against your knee with his own in a painful snap. He expects you to yelp, he expects you to shrink back even just a little bit but all he can see from the corner of his eye is a shark-like smirk and a curious, shadowy darkness beneath the smooth skin of your fingers; almost like little bruises or a brush of graphite. 

When he comes to stand in front of the toilet he understands that all he managed to do was posture a menacing figure only then to leave his back turned toward you. There was no way for him to keep his eyes on you without out-right turning his head and that seemed like a loss in the game you had started. If he eyed you, it’d be a sign of weakness. Like a cornered animal looking over its shoulder to watch for predators. He was already held at a disadvantage with his pants down. It took every ounce of spite he had to face forward and take care of his business. His intention to let you know that he didn’t see you as a threat. 

Your silence was nerve-wracking and he willed himself to empty his bladder in the sharp quiet. This was bordering on his very thin line between the thrill of a game and the desire to feel your warm blood cool on his hands. Anyone else that got within grabbing distance always felt like an object. He wasn’t surrounded by people. He was forced to interact with dolls like they mattered. Like their lives were automatically sacred and didn’t have to earn their own cosmic keep. He supposes that is what predators in the Animal Kingdom feel; that death has a purpose that doesn’t have to make sense or be fair to prey.

It takes longer than he’s strictly happy with, but his bladder finally empties and it feels like his head clears with it. He knows that you’re playing an angle, that these are disguises, and it is a little more unsettling than he’d care to admit. There’s something to be said about the pros and cons of institutionalization. Routine is an amazing tool to keep people a little more in line and streamline their mind. It’s predictable and it is comfortable; the pros. The con has come in the package before him and he eyes you as he passes back to his bed to sit stiffly and in silence. He’s let the monotony turn him as complacent as he can be. Your presence is proof that he needs to be alert again. 

“Did you know that, in other cultures and in animals, it is completely normal to practice endocannibalism?” Your voice is precise and almost like velvet. “Endocannibalism is the act of eating the flesh of those who make up your own community. There were a people, deep in some mountains and cut off from the rest of the world, who would eat their dead as a way to honor them. It was considered an insult and a sort-of hell to be buried. In other cultures, it was seen as a way to gain the strength, knowledge, or energy from sacrifices and enemies. 

“In the womb of a certain type of shark, the strongest pup will consume its siblings before they’re even born. Ensuring survival for the fittest. And that’s just the cherry on top, isn’t it? That frequently the things that society teaches us is abhorrent and taboo are natural in both our fellow animals and in our cultures as a given until exposed to outside ideologies - usually at the hands of someone technologically and militarily superior.” He watches you laugh once and tries not to let his confusion on where this is going show. “That’s a bit like you, isn’t it?”

That throws him so much that his eyebrow actually ticks upward for just the barest of moments. He expects triumph on your face, a smile, the twitch of a nose. It’s been two days, two visits, and you’re already under his skin and it just rankles him to the bone that it has been so easy. Yet, almost as if to be contrary, he doesn’t see the glitter of a win reflected in your face. You don’t look smug. The most unsettling thing is that you’ve posed a question and appear legitimately curious. It shocks him to realize that you aren’t trying to goad him into speaking or emoting. There’s another angle here.

“I won’t pretend to know why you killed your sister.” You continue, looking into the middle-distance like you’re trying to puzzle something out. “And, frankly, I don’t find that I care, either. These are facts. You killed her. You were caught. You’re here. That is the domino effect of living within and being a part of a society that decides which parts of your nature are excusable and which are punishable.”

He realizes that he’s actually making eye-contact with you. Hands are still at his sides and gripping the sheets under him with a tight-knuckled grip hard enough to make his own joints creek. Past therapists and psychiatrists had all felt the same. Offices, books with labels and explanations, therapies with art and music, the knowledge that their interest and help only lasted for an hour at a time. The smell of cheap leather and tweed. Not you though, no.

There was a time, likely to be well-over five years ago, when someone like him had been brought in. Arguably, he was far more un-tethered than Michael is and he says that as someone who has a certain amount of self-awareness. The nurses called him Laurent. All Michael had known was that the man was off the deep end with nothing to help him stay afloat and seemed to like it that way. He’d been dangerous in ways that Michael wasn’t and was. The smell of iron, of the dampness that basements give off, dark earth, and something cold. He was far more eldritch than Michael is. A man that was more monster-under-the-bed than he was human. The difference between a Fae and a regular badger. 

Michael realizes that is the smell he’s picked up from you underneath the artificial cloud of perfume and generic soap. Familiar in that way that you remember, in startlingly-sharp clarity, a very specific day of a memory you’d forgotten. The part about you that bothered him the most, that he hadn’t been able to place before, was that even when he first saw you and you were doing your best to look sexy and like an object his hackles had still risen. Like when a rival cat enters the territory of your housecat. Low-rumbles and bared teeth. Predators recognize other predators. 

You keep talking and Michael listens now with intent because he’d be damned if another Laurent passes through his fingers, “Your case is very peculiar, isn’t it? I’ve been following this case for some time and let’s just say I was surprised to learn that they were deliberating not intending to release you when you turned eighteen. Then the day came, no announcements were made, and you didn’t appear. The system is old, things fall through and get lost in the shuffle, like cracks in asphalt that turn into potholes.”

He feels an uneasiness sweep over him that feels foreign for how little he’s ever encountered it. Three years have passed since he’d been told that he wasn’t being turned loose and it shocks him to know that you’ve known about him far longer than he has known you. How old were you anyway? Michael had never been good at guessing the age of women. The nurses here have hard jobs and are mostly clouds of cigarette smoke and the smell of failing livers. He’d been shocked to find out that the woman in charge of his pills was only thirty-five. The bitch looked like she was pushing sixty. 

It has been a long time since he’s seen someone that looks as young as you do. Smooth skin, few wrinkles, bright eyes, sharp tongue. Those are all qualities lost on anyone that steps into this hell hole. The only woman that he had ever seen that didn’t look like an actual lizard was a young, twenty-something, quiet girl with thick and unruly hair and dark eyes. Another predator. Calm, calculating, clever. Batshit insane but knew how to do just enough to cause trouble but not enough to be caught. The only lesbian he’s ever known. Asylums are mostly full of sad people, minorities, and gays. And call him preferential, but Michael never thought about killing those people. Straight, white women were his basic interest. 

It’s not the same to kill someone who is already tormented and tortured. 

“There’s a reason for that. There are reasons for everything. Predetermined future, you know? A set of statistical probability influenced by a series of traceable and predictable variables. Since then, you’ve been stuck in a place where no-one knows you are, with no representation, and no clear line-of-sight to an end. You’ve been collected. You’re a specimen. Do you not think I know what places like this are like?” His eyes track the movement of your throat while you laugh. 

You continue, “This is not a place people should go to get well. Much like how our prison system is not a good example of rehabilitation. They’re both places to put people that we don’t want to care about anymore. This is where you go to be forgotten, to be lost. Proof that being alone isn’t always best. There’s a reason why wolves hunt in packs.” Michael catches the excited flip of your hand. “Did you know that there is a species of tarantula that will allow a small frog to cohabitate with it? It’s a symbiotic relationship. And you wasted yours, didn’t you?

“Your mother was devoted to you in ways I’m sure children and adults alike across the world wish they had. Sponsored, adored, watched-over. It was her hand that kept you out of the worst of things, see, when someone is put in a place like this with no guardians, they become a ward of the state. You can be classified as an adult, you know? As someone not able to take care of themselves. And their lives become entwined in the claw-fingered hands of uncaring and unfeeling case workers and doctors. There isn’t anyone to ask to sign off on experimental treatment. 

“Those people begin their funeral march the moment the ink dries. So imagine my curiosity when you’re still kickin’.” You look at him like he’s something fascinating you’ve found in the trash. “I had to see it myself, thought it could be a cover-up because you’re just well-known enough to be a household name in the tri-state area at the very least. I think they really capitalized on your Mother’s death. With her dead and you officially locked away people will forget you over time. Then it’s only a matter of time before your worth is wrapped up in what you can offer to the scientific process.”

He watches you shrug in a sort of ‘what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it’ kind of way. The way your lips twitch leads him to believe that you find this all terribly funny and he feels as if your humor is more out of genuine pleasure rather than anything even vaguely mocking. This whole time he hasn’t had one clue into what you wanted out of him. He’d allowed some past experiences and preconceived notions to cloud his vision. What do cops call that? There’s a term, he knows, for this kind of thing. Making up answers to a question that hasn’t even been fully asked yet. Allowing conjecture to define variables. Assumption. 

It is still a mystery to him, one he isn’t sure will ever be fully answered, because as well-thought and performed your act is, Michael isn’t completely convinced if you know where the chips are landing. There’s a penny in for every clever act, each moment cultivated around reflexes and snap-decision making, but there is only so much of both preparation and luck when faced with statistical probability. 

Michael swallows around the dry tongue of thirst and decides that he needs to come to a decision quickly. He’s been baited before, years ago, by people in an effort to get anything they could out of him. There’s a fair amount of paranoia there; of which he is sure will never truly pass. It goes against a part of him he hasn’t ever bothered to identify or come to terms with to obtain a partner. He’d never seen himself in a predicament that called for it. What can’t seem to pass him by is this: if he goes out on a limb here, if he talks, there are only three things that can happen. 

First, this could be a trap and go nowhere. Not the worst outcome and definitely a disappointment. Second, this could be a trap and end in the basement. Worse by all accounts and something to avoid. Thirdly, and somehow the most ridiculous to him, all of this could end well. However unlikely these things feel, the truth is that two of them would invariably end in the basement. He’s taken your words to heart and he fully agrees that his remaining time here is winding down to an inevitable conclusion. It pisses him off that he’s forced to act like a wounded animal. If he doesn’t take the chance he may as well kill himself and save the Doctor the trouble. 

“What,” he rasps, voice rough and almost hollow-like from disuse, “do I need to do?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i feel like i should make this clear that the relationship (which is a word I use in its most vague description) you have with michael is going to be very toxic and very manipulative. think of this as an almost character study for michael too bc i like playing with the idea of the chaos that two people bring together will break one eventually

**Author's Note:**

> ~Because I'm into slashers and life is a fucking nightmare~


End file.
